Bernie beats the rap: Swindler Madoff will get just two lousy days for each victim

Bernie Madoff is getting off light - and there is nothing that anyone can do about securing true justice.

Because there is no such thing in his case.

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There is no punishment within the law that meets the measure of Madoff's crimes.

There is small meaning to a life sentence when you are 70 years old and will surely soon begin to slip into natural decline.

There is small meaning to a life sentence when your crimes, one built deliberately on another, each one a ticking weapon of financial destruction, were but a calculated race against time, a race to enjoy the material comforts of life, to bask in respect, to play the grand world citizen for as long as you could, perhaps unto death.

And there is no meaning to a life sentence when, if you live to be 100, you serve just two days for each life you ruined, each charity you crippled.

Two days.

Two lousy, damn days.

Madoff made a diabolically long run of it. He got what he bargained for, knowing the price that could be exacted of him was declining each day that he reveled in high privilege.

And now we, all of us who want this man punished with appropriate severity, are left to rake the embers of his existence.

The law says Madoff is eligible for a sentence of 150 years. The number is pure symbolism. It is also disgracefully meager when it is considered against the magnitude of his offenses.

As currently tallied, Madoff gave his investors fraudulent statements showing that they had a collective total of $64.8 billion.

If he were to serve one second for each dollar, Madoff would stay imprisoned for 2,053 years.

Even more galling, consider the punishment that Madoff faces for the harm he caused to each of his victims. They now number an estimated 4,800 individuals and charities. Were Madoff to serve 150 years, he would do 11 days per target of his ruin.

But, of course, Madoff will not live that long. Perhaps he will carry another three decades to his century mark. In that event, his sentence will be those two lousy days per victim.